"We can't learn to see until we admit we're blind."

So how can we teach children to see the world?



Differential equations derived by 6-year-olds. Wow. :)

OLPC

Congratulations DH Maitreyabandhu!

Just about a year ago, I posted a beautiful poem by Western Buddhist Order poet DH Maitreyabandhu. (found through Jayarava) I've just discovered that this superb artist has been awarded the Keats-Shelley Prize for the following poem:

The Small Boy and the Mouse by D H Maitreyabandhu


When he closed his eyes and asked the question,

he saw an egg, a boiled egg, lodged

above his heart. The shell had been broken off,

with a teaspoon he supposed, it was pure curd white

and still warm. Inside – he could see inside –

there was a garden with rows of potatoes,

sweet peas in a tangle, and a few tomatoes, red

and green ones, along with that funny sulphur smell

coming from split sacks. There was an enamel bathtub

in the garden, with chipped edges, a brown puddle

staining around itself, and a few wet leaves.

He could see down the plughole, so the sun must have shone,

and he heard his father digging potatoes,

knocking off the soil, and his mother fetching the washing in

because the sky promised a shower. There was a hole

or rather a pipe under the tub, where the water went,

and down at the bottom was a mouse – its ribs were poking out,

its damp fur clung together. The mouse was holding

a black-and-white photograph of a boy

who might have been three or four years old;

the boy was playing with boxes, or were they saucepans

from the kitchen? – he was leaning forward and slightly blurred.

And what was strange about the picture,

apart from being held by a mouse who sat on his haunches

and gripped it in his forepaws, was that the space

around the boy, the paleness around him, expanded,

got very bright and engulfed the mouse, the bathtub, the garden,

and the egg with its shell cracked off.

After that there was nothing, apart from the dark

inside the boy's head and a kind of quiet

he'd never had before. He opened his eyes. All the furniture

looked strange, as if someone had rearranged it.

Program Your Own Instrument

Like Qi Zhang:

Organ virtuoso Qi Zhang plays her electric rendering of "Ridiculous Fellows" from Prokofiev's "The Love for Three Oranges" orchestral suite. This exhilarating performance from TEDx USC features the Yamaha Electone Stagea, a rare, imported instrument specially programmed by Qi herself.



Or Golan Levin:

Half performance artist, half software engineer, Golan Levin manipulates the computer to create improvised soundscapes with dazzling corresponding visuals. He is at the forefront of defining new parameters for art.



Or like Tim Ferriss suggests, by smashing fear:

Productivity guru Tim Ferriss' fun, encouraging anecdotes show how one simple question -- "What's the worst that could happen?" -- is all you need to learn to do anything.

Why is context everything?

Because seeing is more than sight.



"How we see is by continually redefining normality."

Musical Interlude: Vishal Vaid

Ghazal this:

Measure Your Speech with the Golden Rule(r) on November 12th...

...and until then and beyond. It's understood to be a work in progress. ;)


Karen Armstrong on the Charter for Compassion:



Still Water has a good letter about compassionate speech here, with a very relevant quote from Thich Nhat Hanh.


Of course, the place to begin challenging uncompassionate speech is with our own communications and even within our own thoughts.


UPDATE: found a DC-area event on the 12th featuring Karen Armstrong herself.

Noise Becomes Music

Conductor Italy Talgam is delightfully funny, as well as insightful:



"This happiness does not come from only his own story and his story of the music. The joy is about enabling other people's stories to be heard at the same time."

More than Hearing (Redux)

Brilliant depth! Worth really listening. It's not only about music.




"By holding it tightly I feel strangely more detached. If I just simply let go and allow my hand, my arm to be more of a support system, suddenly I have more dynamic with less effort. Much more, and I just feel at last one with the stick and one with the drum. And I'm doing far, far less."

Sensing Sound is more than Hearing

DNA = Design, Nature, Art

Life in Blue and Green is Yellow

"How can we do what life has learned to do, which is to create conditions conducive to life?"

Everything except randomness (red & yellow & white & green & blue)

I love Amy Tan...

All the Answers (Red & Yellow)

I don't know, I don't have to know, here I go...


"The sum of invisible powers..."...hmmmm...